Thursday, October 03, 2013

road trip....


Although the sky looking kind of "angry" in this photo.. the day was actually an amazing fall day. Perfect for a "road trip" and starting it off at one of our favorite places to eat....
We had a couple of passengers with us... Miss Debbie is a great "rider in the car".. she always finds a spot and just ... sleeps...
Camille does the same... and even though there was plenty of room to sit on the seat with Deb... she chose the floor...(she didn't want Debbie "touching" her, I guess...)
The third passenger ... these wheels, which are off the old hand pumper Protection 2. This winter, Ed is going to be giving ol' Protection 2 a spruce up. He's very excited about taking on this project and we'll be keeping a blog on "her progress"....Ed will be doing the metal work, and the wheels are being done by a wheel wright... which is why we had them with us today.
The place is called Firefly restorations, and is run by Andy Swift. Andy has been restoring and preserving old fire engines for over 40 years, and he is so interesting and fun to talk with.
His place may not look like "much"... but looks are deceiving....
Everywhere, there are wonderful old treasures, just waiting their turn to be "loved" once again....
And though, it's main fire engines that he deals with, there are other "goodies"  that in time, will have their time as well.
Andy took us on a grand tour of his place. I have to say, I really love old fire engines, guess that comes from being a fire chief's daughter and wife to a fire fighter.... but I especially love the pieces that were horse drawn. There was such pride and craftsmanship that went into those old pieces... it would be so cool if they could talk and share all the stories of their lives....
I couldn't even say how many "pieces" were there, all  in various stages of work... some privately owned, some still owned by fire companies.... I could have spent hours just looking them all over...
But back to "our" project.. Andy helped Ed unload the wheels of Protection 2 and took a quick look at them.
Compared to some of the projects that he has done... "our" wheels aren't going to be that big a deal....
While the menfolk talked, I took Camille and Deb out for a little walk and look around. Took some pictures of Debbie for her "training blog and experiences..."
After we left Firefly, we headed down the coast... had a nice lunch at Moody's diner (didn't get a pic...) and then just decided that we would stick to the coast the whole way back. Went by some old haunting grounds....










And just enjoyed the day, being together and knowing how blessed we are to live in the prettiest state in the country.....